Networks, especially publicly available networks such as the Internet, often contain a vast amount of human knowledge embodied as content distributed in an unstructured network of remote hosts. The amount of content available on the Internet and other networks increases constantly. However, individual users are generally interested in only a small subset of content available on the entire Internet or other networks. Users typically access such content through a search engine. A search engine must maintain an index of the entire Internet/network (or a large subset of such networks), and this index of the Internet/network is used for processing search requests from all users. Further, each search engine maintains its own search index and related search algorithms. Locating relevant content, therefore, requires the user to adapt his or her search strategy to the particular search engine or search engines being used. Thus, the user must craft a single search statement that returns relevant results using the capabilities of the particular search engine. After issuing the search, the user typically must manually winnow search results to remove irrelevant results, and may manually revise the search statement.